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All posts for the month April, 2018

We talk about Angosian architecture, re-using actors, and how everyone expects the Picard Speech to support them until it doesn’t. Also, we bemoan the lack of kids these days being unable to artfully turn an authoritarian invocation of the Prime Directive.

There’s so much to unpack with the Angosian leadership wanting Danar to put their arms down before negotiating. I know the analogy is veterans and their mistreatment, specifically the treatment of Vietnam veterans, which was a larger issue back in the late eighties/early nineties.

There’s also–with the reservations and the call to disarm before negotiation–a parallel with Native American treatment in the United States. I wish we had a little more time to look into the realpolitik of the disarmament of minority groups, but I guess that’s what the comments section is for.

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.

It’s weird for me to say right out of the box that something is overrated and then to laud it for forty minutes, but there we are. If nothing else, it’s a satisfying episode, like a Saturday afternoon earned after a particularly hard week. It’s a lot of reward, not for anything unpleasant, but it’s gratifying, like a pizza after a strict diet.

I’m not trying to make the rest of The Next Generation sound like a chore; it’s just that it’s a responsible, restrained show that’s got all kinds of ideology and knowledge that are the bran and vegetables of television so the episodes where it can be equally smart and high-minded but also indulge in canon and action scenes feel very, very, very, earned.

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.

There have been good episodes of TNG up until now. But I strongly feel like The Defector is our first Hot Damn episode of TNG. It’s not ‘every frame a painting’ good, but it’s a lean 45 minutes of television and it’s gripping. There’s no personal tsuris about–I don’t know–Troi grappling with drug use or Crusher having trouble at home. There’s no lagniappe drama; there’s no small, personal bullshit or character arc that Jarok’s mission folds neatly into.

Again, I kinda freewheel about what I’m going to call “VanVelding’s Starfleet TOE,” which I think I hit on just enough to quiet the voices. I’m not going crazy when I expect the Enterprise to have a home port and to be assigned to the command of an admiral, right?

The book that Derek is referring to is the one, I think, Picard and Wesley talked about in “Samaritan Snare.” It included the work of American philosopher William James.

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.

I would have liked a musical cooking montage where Riker bonds with Yuta. This episode needs an additional Riker/Yuta scene and improvements on the ones its already got. I like the dimensions of Acamarian society, but it comes at a cost of the heart of this episode, which IS Yuta.

The idea of having Riker’s emotional investment in folks get the viewer emotionally invested is a good one, but the execution is often a bit too romantically focused. It comes off forced and shallow. That’s probably because I’m a homosexual man. On an earnest level, I hope it works better on straight dudes.

Does it?

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Monday mornings at 2:00 AM ET / 1:00 CT.